By İrem Naz Duymuş (AMER/III) & Eda Emekoğlu (AMER/III)
nazduymus@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
eda.emekoglu@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
The Winter Olympics have concluded and so has the first month of Bilkent! I don’t know which was more tough though, the athletes of athletes competing for their lives and representing their states or Bilkent students getting up on time to attend classes. But here we are as champions, waiting for the next challenges to overcome… although as students we lack the societal fame. Nevertheless, it is our duty to recognize the history made by our equally successful friends over in Milano.
The Winter Olympics tend to be less recognized, but they are equally entertaining or better yet even more fun to watch than the Summer Olympics. There are many sports you have probably never heard of, offering visually pleasant scenes of victory, celebration and, of course, failure and desperation. The Winter Olympics differ in style and spirit, and despite personal belief I think they are more colorful. The harmony of movement with nearly perfect figures in a snowy, frosty atmosphere feels soothing even though the competition is fire. Ilia Malinin’s perfectly executed but banned backflip on ice was a shock, delivering surprising and beautiful figure skating. However, the bigger shock was the later performance by Mikhail Shaidorov from Kazakhstan. His clean landings and perfect execution with a relatively traditional performance led him to win gold at only 21 years, outperforming his Japanese runner-up competitor, Yuma Kagiyama, with 11.52 points.
Whether you like music, skating or dazzling clothing you would have loved the performances prior to this week.
On the other hand, if you are into a more paced competition and want more high sprays of ice, you should check out ice hockey (my personal favorite). Hockey is often called “controlled chaos,” where bodies collide at full speed, blades carve the ice into white mist and goals arrive so fast you have to stop and hold your breath. Milano was full of this energy, while last-minute saves kept fans glued to their screens long after midnight and delivered the kind of adrenaline that makes you forget tomorrow’s lecture.
If you want to show that you KNOW winter sports, I guess luge, curling, bobsleigh and skeleton are your kind of tunes, but honestly, I will judge you for that. I mean, when did you discover that lying inches from the ice and defying gravity at a terrifying speed is something you were interested in?!
Although I judge some of you, know that I still got you. I know we don’t stand on podiums or have flags raised in our names, but we are in Bilkent together! Much like the athletes in Milano, we stumble, adapt and learn to push through early mornings and new routines as this term proceeds. Except our version involves missing the bus, misreading syllabi and convincing ourselves that coffee counts as preparation. There are no medals for making it to an 8:30 a.m. lecture or pretending to understand what’s happening in week five, but the struggle is real, nonetheless. So, while Olympians collect gold, we collect attendance points and mild existential dread; and somehow, against all odds, we keep going. I guess that makes us Olympians in the Lecture League. May the attendance be optional and the
Wi-Fi be strong!
